In Joomla the SEF Still Needs a Menu, Here's How to Hide It!

Written by Georg Tuesday, 26 January 2010 14:06

Consider the following scenario: your client wants a very simple, and fast loading, Joomla site. In fact the client's paying for a Content Management Site solution, where he can go in and edit his texts. He couldn't care less if it's a Joomla, a WordPress or a Drupal, he (or she) needs a CMS delivery from your part. So far so good. But the client has a headache understanding the backend "other" site, the /administrator area... No problem! You simply create a new menu item link to the user default login layout page. Then the client may ponder she does not wants the login link visible on her site, because she is not considering collecting new user registrations. The login link should be only for her personal management purposes. Then you handle her this relative URL:

/index.php?option=com_user&view=login

and tell her to bookmark it. This way the client will be able to edit her articles from the frontend, skipping the backend /administrator effort.

But hey, this site is running on sh404SEF, in order to serve happy and friendly URLs for the search engines... aaand the same site hides under that cute nineties living memory of a splash page (see this previous post on the matter). Now, under these so very particular circumstances, the login menu link should be given a custom landing relative url for login/logout operations, because the default index.php will return a 404 not found, because of the skewed index.html "home" (on purpose) setting.

So just write up in those two fields: "login.html" The "Login Redirection URL" and the "Logout Redirection URL", that is. And remember that eventually you've gotta hide that menu item from the public. Can be done by upping its permissions to "Registered" level, this the simple facile manner. Could puzzle the client when unregistered.

And can also be done inside an entirely novel menu, nested in a separate module position. To hide this one, you'll take your coding hat, SSH or SFTP in to the template files, edit index.php to add a new div class, nest the new module position inside, good to have it right above the debug postion. Then open the corresponding CSS file and style it away from screen view with padding settings. Voila!